Nikolay Makarovich Oleynikov ( Никола́й Мака́рович Оле́йников; born 5 August 1898, d. 24 November 1937) was a Russian editor, avant-garde poet and playwright who was arrested and executed by the Soviets for subversive writing. During his writing career, he also used the pen names Makar Svirepy, Nikolai Makarov, Sergey Kravtsov, NI chief engineer of the mausoleums, Kamensky and Peter Shortsighted.

Meanwhile, Tikakeyev was at the store buying sugar, meat and cucumbers. Koratygin milled around in Tikakeyev’s doorway and was about ready to write him a note when he saw Tikakeyev himself, carrying a plastic satchel in his hands. Koratygin saw Tikakeyev and yelled:

“And I’ve been waiting here for a whole hour!”

“That’s not true,” said Tikakeyev, “I’ve only been out 25 minutes.”

“Well that I don’t know,” said Koratygin, “but I’ve been here an hour, that much I do know.”

“Don’t lie,” said Tikakeyev, “It’s shameful.”

“My good sir,” said Koratygin, “you should use some discretion in choosing your words.”

“I think…,” started Tikakeyev, but Koratygin interrupted:

“If you think…,” he said, but then Tikakeyev interrupted Koratygin, saying:

“You’re one to talk!”

These words so enraged Koratygin that he pinched one nostril with his finger and blew his other nostril at Tikakeyev.

Then Tikakeyev snatched the biggest cucumber from his satchel and hit Koratygin over the head.

“They say all the good babes are wide-bottomed Oh, I just love big-bossomed babes. I like the way they smell.” Saying this he began to grow taller and, reaching the ceiling, he fell apart into a thousand little spheres.

Penteley, the janitor came by and swept up all these balls into the dustpan, which he usually used to gather horse manure, and took the balls away to some distant part of the yard.

All the while the sun continued to shine as before, and puffy ladies continued, as before, to smell enchantingly.

It would be nice, not having smoked for a week and having acquired confidence in yourself that you will be able to hold back from smoking, to come into the company of Lipavsky, Oleinikov, and Zabolotsky, so that they would notice on their own that all evening you haven’t been smoking.

And when they ask, “Why aren’t you smoking?” you would answer, concealing the frightful boasting inside you, “I quit smoking.”

A great man must not smoke.

It is good and useful to employ the fault of boastfulness to rid yourself of the fault of smoking.

The love of wine, gluttony, and boastfulness are lesser faults than smoking.

A man who smokes is never at the height of his circumstance, and a smoking woman is capable of just about anything. And so, comrades, let us quit smoking.

Zabolotsky was part of OBERIU (ОБэРИу) a short-lived avant-garde collective of Russian Futurist writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The group coalesced in the context of the “intense centralization of Soviet Culture” and the decline of the avant garde culture of Leningrad, as “leftist” groups were becoming increasingly marginalized.

Lipavsky and Oleynikov belonged to a later grouping, which had no public outlet, is generally called the “chinari” (i.e. “the titled ones”) group in Russian literary scholarship, though it is uncertain that they ever formalized a name for the group, nor that they called themselves “chinari” with any consistency. Thus, the names “OBERIU” and “chinari” are somewhat interchangeable in the scholarship. The borders between the two groups are (and were) permeable, and the only basic continuity is the presence of Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky.